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tv   [untitled]    September 18, 2012 5:00pm-5:30pm EDT

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well you know. why know what's really happening to the global economy with much stronger no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to this report. today on r t one week after a deadly attack in libya details are beginning to reveal what actually took place that night and the more information the u.s. state department releases the murkier the case gets so why isn't the mainstream media separating fact from fiction in the attack. and occupy wall street celebrated its birthday with protests in the movement's birthplace and over one hundred eighty are rats now new reports of police brutality and entrapment are coming out so coming up a wrap up of the anniversary rally. plus tens of thousands of drug offenders could
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be let off the hook in massachusetts this after authorities discovered case after case of mishandling by a laptop chemist we want to know how this employee and mismanagement was able to go on for so long and and this happened at other crime labs nationwide. it's tuesday september eighteenth five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching r t o's one week ago today that a raid and benghazi left four americans dead new details continue to come to light as the story evolves and many questions remain and what was reported in various news reports is that the u.s. ambassador to libya chris stevens was killed after the consulate was stormed and then burned down by extremists this after an amateur anti muslim film produced privately in the u.s.
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went viral on the internet here's a look at some of the reports. we know he was a big ozzie of the u.s. consulate there we know that there are three other three other people who were killed united states marines who guard all of our facilities this consulate and the embassy had no actionable intelligence foreshadowing the attack on the u.s. consulate in libya there are important divisions between the united states and libya on the investigation of what exactly happened at the consulate and the safe house. yeah you heard that right a safe house but there's a very big difference between an embassy or consulate and especially a safe house if you do a quick check on line a safe house refers to quote a house or apartment used as a hiding place or secure refuge by members of an organization such as a secret service agency or in underground terrorist group here's an interesting and puzzling detail if you take a look at the u.s. state department's website which we did it provides a list of all u.s. embassies consulates and diplomatic missions strangely not listed the diplomatic
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mission in benghazi but a quick search on the same site will turn up numerous other diplomatic missions the u.s. is taking part in so what does this say about the coverage of libya and to the mainstream media missed some important details for this and more i was joined by georgetown university professor christopher chambers. you have to understand the many levels there was things would have just broken apart with this. on the reporting level on the news media level you have. missions you know foreign bureaus everywhere closing down you are relying on stringers on the ground that are highly unreliable in war situation this is this is a country that is basically a kid into what the united states was in one thousand nine hundred sixty five when the civil war was over i mean in ruins so you can't rely on them and you can't rely on a bank of information of reporters on the ground who are nosing around and trying to
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get into the militia groups that were actually helping. you know after the ambassador was killed the extremists who were they i mean you know there are been a rest now we don't have those eyes on the ground now they have the you have the other level of breakdown that is in that with the state department supposed to do and the state department isn't saying anything because the whole place is a crime scene now what is the place inside an embassy the consulate i mean because we've had those those dual breakdowns we just don't know and i mean they did tell it can be an important one because the pentagon whether or not it is an embassy or consulate or a diplomatic mission of play it says depending on what happens there there are different implications well here's here's where you know that both breakdowns merge before the event i mean this is a country that's been in ferment for a long time and we had to do with that. and because of the lawlessness because this
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is a you know a government if you want to call it that that's just been born i mean it's hard to say what exactly our presence is there i mean yes ok it's an embassy but i mean you know our mission or or just a group of people gathered together i mean stevens was was an ambassador. it was his title but you know you have the special situation where this this place is plopped down in benghazi the staff is put there but it's almost an off the books operation i mean secretary of state has basically said that and it to the point where you have security firms that we usually use you know we usually farm that out outsource that is a british security firm that they they were just using for that group for that building for that mission because it is such a unique we off the books kind of a situation where maybe you might say what's new the government's new the country's
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new we created it after gadhafi was you know was was killed along with the british french and italians however i mean it has more of an off the books quality the newness quality and i think the state department really the american people and the media an explanation of this the acts in the media owes itself and the american people traditional journalism traditional reporting out of the story which they do not do very well when it comes to foreign. issues and tragedies such as this i think that are saying that you call this off the books operation obviously a very chaotic situation there are many questions today and a question that we're hearing asked time and time again in the media and the mainstream media today is what is it why do they hate us so much why do they hate us over there in the middle east so much. but i mean it it's all being penned it and the big focus right now is on this this anti muslim rodeo the innocence of muslims and yes i mean this is being used as justification but this anti-american
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sentiment that not just happen overnight yeah i mean but another thing we don't do well is is nuance the problem here is there's no nuance here this is nationalism plain and simple these are these are people who have many many dogs in many many fights and we are very convene. rallying point for people who are both sly and insane or bush or sane you know it doesn't have to be one or the other so you know this is this stuff is going to happen over there because you have these these societies that are basically breaking apart and coming back together again that's nothing new in world history it's just that the intensity. of the influence of technology and social media magnifying this movie you know and the people who made the movie have an agenda too you have these clashing agendas that have nothing to do with common sense and some of them have everything to do with being strategic
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and being political so you have that all that thrown into a part and just sort of fire to it this is going to happen now the question is were was everybody on alert for nine eleven i mean you know you have the right wing press if you want to call it that i put quotation marks coming up with all kinds of conspiracy theories some plausible some aluminum foil on the head about preparedness successor etcetera and hidden agendas you know and then the state department is mom now you know if they are stonewalling the one thing about the right wing press is accurate as they are zipping what they're saying look we've got the cia over there the marines and the justice department f.b.i. crime scene so they're they can hide behind that pretty effectively but we shouldn't be surprised that you know they hate us but i mean if we disappeared tomorrow there would be something else to hate because these are nations that are trying to rebuild themselves i'm not trying to put a positive spin on it it's just that when you have that aspect to it i mean there's
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going to be death there's going to be chaos just going to be hatred there's going to be things set on fire and loss of life and that's that's how human politics and human history goes so we're just a convenient scapegoat and here we are saying a lot of the contrary everything. in fables. duration of their unstable excuse me. what is stress is that this is not this is this is a extremists of extremists they are by no means represent the sentiment of the entire country but i mean i guess what can be pointed out is that the situation there is very volatile and very complex. and. we don't do complicated well and maybe where should we should be examined is why what is leading up to this instead of oversimplifying the situation it's one that is very very calm exactly and we you see that in. more. focused media outlets i mean you know
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with regard to cable and satellite networks i mean r t for example you have focused analysis with with certain websites certain magazines even ones that are fairly have a conservative bent to them you don't see that in the cable giants you know for obvious reasons this is the least common denominator programming some times though you don't even really see that consistently in some of our major. electronic outlets like say the new york times or the post it's kind of a of value in a trough kind of coverage i mean sometimes it gets. and as broad as the t.v. networks and sometimes it does get kind of deep but there's no consistency here so you're really going to have to look kind of at these more specific outlets to find your news but you have to be careful about again the ideological bender angle or approach that these more specific outlets have but you know that's really going to
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have to go for the analysis not c.n.n. m s n b c or definitely not fox have really interesting press they have pleasure to have you on as i think you christopher chambers a journalism professor for a georgetown university. still ahead an r t occupy wall street brings in its anniversary with massive demonstrations and where there is protests you can bet there are arrested over one hundred eighty in the big apple alone and i had a wrap up of yesterday's events.
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but this week marks the one year anniversary since the birth of the occupy wall street movement and occupiers commemorated the day with hundreds taking to the streets in new york city protesting corporate influence on politics plays reportedly arrested one hundred eighty one protesters artie's on a saucy a church and i gives a wrap up of how the day played out. after the occupy
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wall street movement is here after its inception. takes the big apple by storm in full force i think i think that it is up more spac and behind barricades from the wee hours of the morning. marches and acts of civil disobedience all day long images that have become all too familiar throughout the past year reoccurring protesters thrown to the ground people there to document the action knocked down. activists attempting to help others wrestled by police. arms twisted handcuffs left and right over one hundred eighty people arrested in one day when there's no place for people to come outside and to meet each other and talk about issues when that is so dangerous that you get such severe violence and police repression then we don't really have a democracy for a year now occupy has fought for eradicating wealth inequality and social and
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economic injustice in the us give people jobs give people education if you will help you you have to help the mess. no accountability for wall street bankers here is after become a collapse. still has people outraged expecting it may be naive but demanding it is and it starts with making a statement and that's what the people here are doing skeptics had hoped that occupy camps which once flourished over the west but now have cleared out would put an end to the movement after months of camping out here in the financial district the coffee party for what seemed to be the peak of occupy hundreds of protesters are back here on the first anniversary of the movement to show that it's very much alive. the lack of encampments protesters say has not been asta. we've really been able to focus on the issues that are important to us and that brought us out here
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in the first place of economic disparity and to end a political system that no wrong longer represents people who don't have the money to compete and one of occupies key achievements so far triggering a national dialogue about what matters to the majority of americans the occupy movement has kept a dialogue around fairness and equality and access to the good things that we all want that should be available to everyone and that dialogue is now in the public the occupiers intend to do their best to keep this dialogue alive like the civil rights movement and i would say that you know still has a long way to go. and it's been you know since before i was born i think occupy will have a similar history i think there's so much that has to be done that change is not going to be handed to us with a bow on it with no miracles just around the corner patience and perseverance the saying are what will bring tangible change to the u.s.
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and. our team. was out more about the occupy anniversary protests i'm joined now by r.t. correspondent. ana stasia nice to see you so how would you describe the way that the protests played out yesterday. well you know listen i think we saw more people show up than some might have hoped for skeptics and critics of the occupy wall street movement of course as we know have been saying there's no way one year on considering somewhat of a break that many people were going to show up on the anniversary and then of course has not been the case we literally as you saw in this report saw hundreds and hundreds of people flooding the streets of new york spread action all throughout the financial districts they reoccupied zuccotti park for a day there were several actions taking place outside banks in other areas there were as we saw of different clashes with police unfortunately as we mentioned one hundred eighty one people got arrested including journalists including independent
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journalists people with photo cameras there to document events so definitely the events of the day unravels pretty intensely we did see some tensions on the ground we have to say that the action for now has wrapped up again but the occupy wall street movement yesterday did make it clear again that all of those people who were there on day one and throughout the last year they all still believe in their mission and they were all still out on the streets yesterday and how would you describe the morale among the protesters one year later you know morale i think has transformed to a place where people feel a lot more confident in what they're doing within this movement because when we were there on day one talking to these protesters that came out on the streets they had a general idea of what is going wrong in the united states they were talking about wealth inequality they were talking about social and economic justice they were talking about accountability for bankers but there didn't really seem to be sort of a unified feeling about how to go about this and of course we saw throughout the
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year we saw the camps being built we saw that people being asked to leave to say the least from the camps around the united states but more our means very positive and all the people we talked to yesterday at the anniversary say they believe the message and the. movement is going to keep alive and you know any social movement that erupts in the united states or any other country it's kind of naive to expect that one year is all it takes for real change to take place and that's the exactly what the occupiers were saying all day yesterday so obviously there were a lot of clashes one hundred eighty one arrests how would you describe the police presence there. you know the police presence was quite intense we did speak to some locals who even jokingly said that there seems to be more police on the ground and that's what making what's making it complicated for them to get to work in the morning is the police barricades and not so much the protesters of course there is an opposite opinion and some people were quite unhappy about the protests taking place in the first place yesterday but generally the police presence was quite
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heavy soft police on horses and we saw barricades everywhere the police were surrounding zuccotti park in the evening when it got dark where we were expecting and sort of suspecting that in the victualling could take place we did end up taking place peacefully but just definitely quite a significant presence definitely clashes we saw showed in that report some of the more gruesome footage that we witnessed yesterday but definitely the police are quiet so much keeping their eye on the occupy wall street movement and are bound to keep doing so in the months to come. interesting so i know that you have been covering this story all year we're here on this one year anniversary and a saucy how would you describe it today in relation to when it sparked a one year ago. i have to say liz that probably the criticisms that pushed the occupy wall street movement had a lot to do with the way it transformed if we remember on day one and throughout the months that followed the mainstream media the critics were saying oh it's just
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a bunch of dirty hippies young anarchists they don't know what they're doing but exactly these kinds of criticism is what made the occupy wall street movement become a lot more concentrated in terms of what it's about we saw people of begin to organize outside the camps you saw people hold actions throughout the year we saw people continuing you know writing articles continuing working for the occupy cause online which is certainly a very significant way of getting the message across so even though there are no these camps around anymore as we saw in the beginning no sort of giant crowds on the streets. system glee the participants of occupy themselves say that right now they feel like they know a lot much more about what they're doing what their causes are and what kind of change pacifically they're looking for and they're looking to keep fighting for that change ok as of yesterday was the one year to the day anniversary today the day after what is it looking like have the protests dispersed for the most part the
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protests have dispersed today we we were down at zuccotti park earlier today to see what was going on after our people stayed of the park until nighttime really last night right now there is nobody has a copy but this is something we did ask the occupiers about and not a lot of people really were expecting to stick around because the form of the movement has changed like we said they're not looking to camp out anymore there right now looking more at the substance and organizing within groups within themselves and really holding more events you know when anniversaries and things like that because it's harder to maintain a larger crowd every single day of the year it's a lot more efficient according to occupy to gather at certain periods of time to underline the substance of the movement right on associate thanks so much for staying on top of this story that was our t. correspondent on the saucy a turkey. well it's a drug investigation gone terribly wrong in massachusetts drug lab is closed pending an investigation amid accusations that tens of thousands of drug samples
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were mishandled the massachusetts governor has released figures showing that the manager conducted a quote unusually high volume of testing between two thousand and four and two thousand and eleven and as the attorney in general investigates thousands of criminal convictions and pending cases remain in the balance talk more about this independent journalist running a colic joins us now. ron you're welcome so it's unclear at this point what the motive is but i guess the question is why would anybody do this. well we don't know yet that's still quite a mystery of how this happened and why this happened. but there does seem to be people who were trying to keep this under wraps and that's unfortunate but i think this goes to show how. how easy it is or not how easy it is but i think this goes to show the enormous consequences that this can have on the criminal justice system
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and. you know it also shows that you know how how do we know that this isn't happening in other places in other labs and other standards why was there any oversight i mean how is this going on for so long these are questions that are being asked and that i mean i guess hopefully will be answered soon. and that's exactly it i mean it took place between two thousand and four and two thousand and eleven that's a pretty considerable amount of time we're talking thousands and thousands of cases allegedly mishandled and you would think that they're out this the time frame that there were some red flags. there did seem to be some red flags according to the few reports we've seen out first beginning as early as two thousand and eleven but again that you know the question should be why weren't there red flags raised before that there should be some level of oversight in love that he needs or the the results that you're getting from drug lab tests or others forensic lab tests i mean this is affecting cases in convictions and you know there could be people
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right now behind bars to shouldn't be behind bars who shouldn't have sentences that are as long as they are because according to reports i mean these drugs were mishandled to the point where some samples were made bigger than others and evidence was messed with i mean this is a this is serious serious that there's like thirty four thousand cases that will be affected by this. and i mean there was a you know there's also the question of what about people who have who are undocumented immigrants who have been convicted i mean if you're a documented and immigrant or convicted of a drug felony you will be deported and so that's another concern as there are people who've been deported as a result of this so there's not really a way you can always fix these kinds of things that's unfortunately as well it sounds like there's a lot of serious implications and this for thousands of people do you have a clip of these secretary of health and human services judy and the let's take a listen to what she said to a local news station there. we have an incredible sense
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of. anger and disappointment that an individual chemist could create so much chaos in the criminal justice system and there she is she raises an interesting question there i mean how can one person craze so much chaos a lot of responsibility in the hands of one person apparently and went unchecked how could that happen and could this be going on elsewhere in other jurisdictions. you know that's the problem with a lot of the processes we used to examine evidence around the country in various jurisdictions is that there aren't and a lot of cases national standards there aren't there aren't oversight committees there aren't there are accountability measures in place to make sure that the stuff is being held correctly and we used to catch these mistakes when they happen so yeah you're right i mean that's one person created all this havoc this one chemist and that shouldn't be the case and this is a problem and not just with this one situation with the drug lab but also if you
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think about it i mean we don't have national standards we don't have oversight committees except for very few small amount of places when it comes to forensic evidence as well we don't have national standards in place or oversight committees or ways to hold police accountable when they're showing witnesses lineups for eyewitness identification i mean there's there's all these different processes of the criminal justice system that don't go unchecked and we're people of small amount of people have all this power over convicting you know over these cases where people get convicted and there's nobody looking to see how it's getting handled and if there's any reason to believe that it's getting mishandles i mean i guess other jurisdictions can take a look at what's happening in massachusetts and ask how can we prevent this from happening here how can how can other states prevent it from happening and there are various own jurisdictions whether it is in stating some of these. the oversight committees that you just mentioned well i mean the best way to do that is to look
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to science there are many message allocative method validated method. ways to examine evidence. and ways to deal with evidence where it can be where you can make sure that it won't be mishandled or you can make sure that if any red flags show up there will be used sort of like a system of you know more than one person more than one chemist checking you know or somebody somebody looks over the results and you know oversees the results i mean having oversight committees having standards that everybody has to follow not having a single kind of have you know be giving out you know tens of thousands of drugs. all on their own does this kind of a raised raise the issue or the question of how faulty or reliable our drug tests i mean especially when these tests are being used to dictate the fate of a person well that again that's when you know that that's when we should be trying
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to science to show is what is the most accurate method of doing these things and when it comes to the criminal justice system time and again you know we've seen that it's not necessarily the science that's wrong it's the weight being dealt with it's the weight being done it's the fact that people don't know how the people being put in charge of doing forensic dealing with forensic evidence are dealing with the drug sample don't know what they're doing they're not properly trained so that's an issue as well certainly there should be tax at least to a prevent human error wrong a great to have you on the show that was wrong to kalak an independent journalist. thank you for having me and that is going to wrap it up for now but for more on the stories we've covered you can check out our you tube channel that address is youtube dot com slash r c america we post all of our interviews on line there in fall or you can check out our website our producers are busy working on stories we don't always have to have time to get some on the air that address there is our
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t.v. dot com slash usa and you can also follow me on twitter at liz wall we'll be right back here at eight pm see that. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call i don't. i'm sort of the guy here that are. you sir are you know what that is mine are there to see if you want to see the feature in the on the ball and the crew. can really sort of. you know the closer you distracts us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to be.

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